David Garfield

David Garfield is the founder of the Garfield Law Group PC. For the past 33 years, the firm has offered a full range of immigration law services and specializes in employment-based visa petitions representing individual clients and large corporations, family-based immigration, removal defense, and immigration litigation.

David Garfield was recognized as one of the top immigration attorneys in the Washington DC area by the Washingtonian magazine from 2011 to 2015. Mr. Garfield is an expert on both non-immigrant and immigrant business visas with an outstanding track record over two and a half decades of practice. He and his team of attorneys have successfully represented as chief immigration counsels several billion-dollar corporations and two nationally recognized ballet companies. His firm successfully represents foreign investors, inter-company transferees, H-1B professionals and other professionals employed by U.S.-based corporations and businesses. Mr. Garfield’s law office also has successfully represented numerous outstanding researchers and academics, as well as other famous artists and performers.

Mr. Garfield has served as an immigration advisor to the Korean American Association located in Annandale Virginia, and the Ethiopian Community Development Council located in Washington DC. Mr. David Garfield is viewed as an expert on immigration litigation and removal defense.

Mr. Garfield and his able staff have successfully litigated hundreds of complex cases before the Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and federal Courts of Appeals. His most notable federal cases included Menghesha v. Gonzales, 450 F.3d 142 (4th Cir.2006), Naizgi v. Gonzales, 455 F.3d 484 (4th Cir.2006), Haile v. Holder, 591 F.3d 572 (7th Cir.2010), and Berhane v. Holder, 606 F.3d 819, (6th Cir. 2010). In June of 2010, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit awarded Mr. Garfield’s firm more than $43,000 in attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act.

Previously, Mr. Garfield also recovered substantial attorneys’ fees from the U.S. government in relation to Menghesha v. Gonzales, 450 F.3d 142 (4th Cir.2006). Mr. Garfield has represented countless victims of torture over the years. He is a pioneer in the utilization of forensic psychological evaluations as an important tool in establishing eligibility for asylum and other immigration benefits. Mr. Garfield’s development of this important tool, which is now a standard methodology, began as early as 1991. His cases have been recognized as practice models cases by immigration judges at their annual conference.

For his efforts in effectively representing torture survivors, Mr. Garfield was recognized through a Community Human Rights Award from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area — an award for which he was nominated by the director of the Center for Multicultural Human Services in Arlington, Virginia.

Mr. David Garfield is a member of the District of Columbia Bar. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, with a degree in African History in 1980. He graduated from Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., in 1984. As a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) since 1986, he lectures and presents papers on immigration issues in a variety of public forums. His presentations or publications have included Terrorism Related Grounds of Inadmissibility at AILA’s 2010 Annual Conference; Making the Best of Two Bad Laws- A Comparative Look at U.S. and Canadians Laws on Inadmissibility at the Law and Society Conference, Chicago, Illinois; Attacks on Immigrant Rights at the Law Union Conference, Toronto, Canada; keynote speaker for 2003 World Refugee Day, Washington, D.C.; panelist at the Ethiopian Community Center’s Annual Community Day, Washington, D.C.; The Impact of 9/11 on Refugees and Immigrants for 2002 World Refugee Day, Washington, D.C.; and, guest lecturer, Central American Refugees and Asylum Law, Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass. Mr. Garfield chief immigration advisor for the Ethiopian Community Development Corporation, Washington, D.C. and the Korean American Association, Annandale, Virginia.

In September 2014, Mr. Garfield opened an office in Honolulu, Hawaii.